2015 U.S. National Drone Racing Championships Interview with the Winner

Interviews and video from the first U.S. National Drone Racing Championships. The great team at Tested (Here is their YouTube channel for more great videos) have a nice chat with the director of this year’s event and with the person who was the winner of the competition … Chad “Final Glide” Nowak from Australia.

The FPV quadcopter racing competition brought together pilots from all around the world and was hosted by the California State Fair from July 15 – 17, 2015 at a course built on a soccer field in Sacramento, California. 120 drone pilots competing for prize money that totaled $25,000. FPV racing of quads has really moved to the big stage in the U.S. Will be interesting to see how much bigger the event will be next year as the continuing interest in drones grows.

So what were the pilots flying? According to the Drone Nationals FAQ page, 250 class …
Anything that measures up to a maximum of 330mm from rotor shaft to rotor shaft is considered eligible.
And the course?
general specs are:
260ft long by 240ft wide
73m long by 80m wide
It is a COUNTER-CLOCKWISE rotation flight path. All four corners will be used with a flag at each corner, with some dog-legs, hairpins and slaloms included inside of the boundary. There will be several gates involved, typically 5’~6′ high, 10′ wide.

From the Drone Nationals home page, the teams competing are:
Atmospheric Adventures, Team Guru FPV, Team Horizon, Team Lumenier (which includes Charpu),
Multirotor Misfits, Team Black Sheep (which includes Trappy and Zoe the current female world fpv champion), VooDooQuads, and Team Rotorx